Macedonian pianist Simon Trpčeski is one of those thoughtful musicians who can make listeners hear details and moods in familiar works which may have eluded them before. Last Thursday night at Meany Theater, he gave a performance of works by Grieg, Mendelssohn, and Rimsky-Korsakov, two of them ones we are maybe more used to in their orchestral versions.
Grieg’s “From Holberg’s Time” was originally composed for piano though we often hear it as Grieg orchestrated it for strings a year later. It was a treat to hear it in Trpčeski‘s hands as it was first composed. It’s great as the string version, but it really shines in the piano version. Trpčeski used big dynamic contrasts, sometimes a bit startling, and a good deal of rhythmic license to show off the work’s shape. All of Trpčeski’s interpretations, particularly the fourth section, described Andante religioso, and the fifth, a sprightly, very fast and featherlight rigaudon, were lucid, dynamic and brought out the work’s charm.
Mendelssohn’s ability to “sing” on the piano in his Songs Without Words goes without saying, but we don’t often hear any of these short pieces in recital. The six Trpčeski chose were a representative, varied selection, from the emotional “Lost Joy,” to the bright, showy “Lost Illusions,” which didn’t seem to match its title.
Trpčeski’s playing is technically brilliant, but although almost all of it was clean and very clear in his flying fingers, there were several moments when he shook out his right hand as though he was having some problems with it. A few notes in that hand were not hit true.
Despite this, the piano arrangement by Belgian composer Paul Gilson of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, comes across as a brilliant tour de force for any performer, if they can encompass it. There was no doubt Trpčeski could, and the story of Scheherazade in these four segments was brought out in masterly fashion, from the unmistakable feel of the sea in both first and last segments from relative calm to high swells and shipwreck, plus the shoals of young love from dreamy lightheartedness through brief spats. Trpčeski’s interpretation was one of high drama. He used considerable rubato—tempo variations—all through, wide dynamic ranges from the quietest frothy lightness to furious loud chords. The whole was a mesmerizing and colorful auditory vision of the tale.
At the end, he gave as encore Grieg’s Waltz in A minor, and dedicated it to a woman in the audience, Slagjana Jovanovikj, who, he announced from the stage, had “prepared me for my performance at the children’s song festival when I was 7 and prepared my daughter for the same two years ago.”
